Gallery sizes up $35m Kandinsky

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Forget Blue Poles. The National Gallery of Australia is
considering a painting with a $35 million price tag - dwarfing its
biggest purchase yet, the $7.5 million Lucian Freud, After
Cezanne.

It is Wassily Kandinsky's Sketch for Deluge II
(pictured), and its purchase would at last bring the Russian
expressionist to Australia in all his glory.

Although there is a Kandinsky watercolour in the Art Gallery of
NSW, bought in 1982, there are no major works by him in Australia.
The prospect excited the Art Gallery of NSW's director, Edmund
Capon: "You know what I would do? I'd sell the building and buy the
painting!"

Sketch for Deluge II (1912) is an oil on canvas from the
private collection of Americans Philip and Muriel Berman, but it
failed to sell at a Sotheby's auction in 2004, where it had been
valued at $US20 million-$US30 million.

The National Gallery would not confirm whether the painting had
been brought to Canberra for inspection but a source at the gallery
said it was looking at buying it.

The National Gallery has a small but strong international
collection, including Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles,
Brancusi's Birds (each bought for $1.3 million) and a few
crowd-pleasing works bought under the previous director, Brian
Kennedy. Kandinsky is considered one of the most original and
influential artists of the 20th century.

One art market analyst, Michael Reid, thought it was possible
the gallery's new director, Ron Radford, was keen to inspire big
benefactors with his "build it and they will come" attitude.

International dealers would also be aware that the gallery had
an annual acquisitions budget from the Federal Government, separate
from its operational budget. The gallery is expected to register an
operating deficit of several million dollars this year, and it may
need more money for its troubled building project. But its
director, Mr Reid noted, had been "very successful banging the
drum" for private funds, though never before for so much.

The gallery does not comment on potential acquisitions as a
matter of policy but a spokesman for the gallery's chairman, Harold
Mitchell, said: "The [gallery] from time to time receives offers to
purchase major works of international art." He called it
"appropriate recognition by the international art community of the
significant role played by the National Gallery".